To Benjamin Alexander Morton
C/o Brown Shipley & Co
1123 Pall Mall
London
Rome. March 14, 1924
That the human brain and heart are the central office, so to speak, where all messages are received and resent, and that without such delicate personal, often inexplicable redirection of forces there would be no human life, morality, or history, I think is certain; but I am afraid we should get into hopeless difficulties if we tried to stop at the conscious origins of our actions and feelings. Consciousness is a very superficial thing.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Three, 1921-1927. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: Alderman Library, University of Virginia at Charlottesville